VB 6 to .NET Migration

If you have your business running on VB6, you would mostly aware by now that Visual Basic 6 has been phased out by Microsoft and this means that the system support you would receive for maintaining your system would reduce with time. At this stage when you are completely hooked up with the application, your business is stuck and You don’t like it at all. You are now facing an option of maintaining the Visual Basic application, porting it into VB.NET or creating a new application from scratch.

Why Migrate to VB.NET

The basic question - why should I even think of Migrating?

Creating a new application from scratch could be a herculean task. Because your applications are too critical, you might still opt in for maintaining the existing VB application. However this may mean that you might not achieve a lot of scalability to your systems.

Migrating to the .NET platform seems the most suitable solution for a business whose lifeline has been traditional VB6. This way, you can choose to shift to the newer, advanced VB.NET applications while not affecting their businesses. This would not only help you leverage benefits of the new advanced product offering from Microsoft but also be sure of the continued support services which Microsoft will provide in addition to the product enhancements and security fixes on a regular basis.

However, migrating from VB6 to VB.NET has been under serious discussion ever since Microsoft launched .NET. VB.NET is not quite backward compatible with prior versions like Visual Basic version 6. This makes migration very challenging. There would be issues unless planning is in place for this migration.

Steps of Migration to VB.NET

Code move from VB6 to VB.NET is a challenge. Upgrading to VB.NET is not just a matter of pasting your new code in place of existing code. It is highly essential to understand your application, your code clearly before any vendor can start the migration process.

VB Migration Framework has 5 pillars which help ensure best in class quality during the migration of the application.

Identification

The identification phase is the key to VB Migration. Identification of all the modules of the application, their dependencies is crucial for a system migration. With one highly critical but small module left out in the identification phase and found later can give you more headache than spending time well in the identification process.

Analysis

In this phase all the component modules are analyzed for redundancies. This is an important feature of our VB migration model because we attempt to reduce duplicities in the system, cut across inefficiencies and build on a robust system.

Evaluation

This is where customer decision making comes in. The entire process of migration is attempted because it is expected that the business is critical enough and that the business will scale up in the coming years and that the systems need to be updated to handle not only performance issues due to an increasing load but also for up-scaling.

Deployment & Testing

Deployment of the VB.NET code is followed by thorough testing which ensures that all the defects if any, are caught before the new application is made live.

you get the following assurances:

• Stability and Experience of over 20 project executions in VB6 to VB.NET migration projects for global clients.
• Microsoft Gold Certified. So you would get Microsoft certified technology experts/developers working on your migration.
• You can take advantage of our innovative project management processes including the 2MV and CATALYST models before, in the process of and after migration is done.

Migration from VB6 to VB.NET is not an easy affair and if it is attempted with less information, less knowledge or less experience, chances are more that it would go wrong than right. Your applications are critical to your business. Evaluate your migration consultant before you hand them your business.